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It's an immigrant story, and a hermaphrodite story (a sexual outcast story, if you will) and an American story. Once the timeline finally reached Cal's childhood I felt so connected to his story that I could really appreciate how the story was being told from a man's point of view, but he was talking about himself, the little girl. I might classify this book as magical realism, due to it's mystical and sometimes whimsical qualities. Middlesex wowed me. It was lovely. It has the Gabriel Garcia Marquez kind of quality, where there is so much history and backstory that you become immersed in the characters and plot until you really are living within the story. So readable.
In order to tell his story properly he must acquaint the reader with his family history. It's fantastic the way that Eugenides was able to give me a completely new point of view on my sex and sexuality; things I generally take for granted. What if I knew there was something different about me but I didn't know what. Throughout the first half of the book I was interested, but not addicted. What if I thought I was a girl but I turned out to be a boy.
I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. For the first time I found myself considering from a very personal and subjective point of view what it might be like to be unclassifiable. But this book was so beautifully written. Eugenides tells the tale from the point of view of the protagonist, Cal, in the present, looking back. But I kept reading because I really wanted to find out what happened when Callie became Cal.
It was fascinating to learn about how he became the person he is, not just how he lived with it. I thought this was a book about the author's life as a hermaphrodite. Instead I got a richly told story of history and family leading up to the discovery of his medical issue.
I couldn't really get into the main character, a hermaphrodite. I don't have a clue as to why Oprah picked this one. I did not find the story compelling either. I read almost all the Oprah picks and this book did not appeal to me at all. I am truly mystified as to why so many people thought this book was so great.
One reader wanted more of the story of Cal, but I actually enjoyed the back story of his lineage. I LOVED this book, it has moved up to one of my top five. I do have one question; I must have missed it, but does anyone know why he referred to his brother as "chapter eleven." I assumed it was in reference to his actual chapter eleven in the book, but I don't get it. I love books that are unlike anything I've ever read and this fits the bill. Euginides is an excelent writer; I am so impressed. I was actually not expecting the book to be like it is.
You see, the human zygote on the basis of our evolutionary heredity, is a female, and needs certain things to occur at the genetic level in order to create a sexually normal male. Honestly, when I heard what the novel was about, I thought that was daring, and into new ground. This is important to me as I once knew of someone with this condition. I enjoyed the style which had some nice easy passages and one-liners.
The author did do good research though in describing the condition which isn't easy given its complex nature. But the book is a good read. I think the emotional aspect of having to hide this condition from everyone, and the experience of being a man, trapped in a woman's body wasn't explored enough. This is where the novel lets people down.
Somehow, she inhereted the same defect on chromosome 5 which results in someone appearing to be a sexually normal female, until they hit puberty when their testes try to drop and a visit to a doctor confirms that she is in fact; a he. Sadly, they live quiet lives of desperation and rarely reveal who or what they are for the fear or stigma that they would end up with. Recently, I had a chance to read it and found it kinda epic, but falling short on the most critical aspect which is the narrator of indeterminate gender Callie/Cal. Many things can go wrong here during development, and the result is that in America, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 people who are sexually dimorphic due to some kind of genetic error.
It happens in about 1 in 10,000 births. I met her as an 18 year old blonde haired, blue eyed beautiful young lady. I am still haunted by some of the things this person told me, and I remain sympathetic to anyone with this condition, which is actually more common than most people realize.
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